One or more cases brought by Tennessee victims could go to trial next year, Boston attorney Kristen Johnson Parker said Monday.

Dozens of suits filed by victims or their survivors have been merged in a case now pending before U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in Boston.

Plaintiffs proposed in a motion late last week that two or more cases involving the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center “should be tried first and as soon as practicable, hopefully in early spring of 2015,” Parker said. One or more cases would go before a jury in May 2015, and another would go to trial a month later.

The Saint Thomas cases would serve as “bellwether” suits, under a procedure used by the federal courts to speed the processing of multiple related lawsuits.

The proposal does not say which local cases would serve as bellwethers or whether they would be heard in Boston or Nashville.

“There is some chance that Judge Saylor could preside over a trial in Tennessee federal court,” Parker said in an email.

Attorneys for the Saint Thomas outpatient center said they would respond to the motion in a formal court filing.

The proposal would put Nashville-area victims at the head of a long line, local attorneys said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 751 patients were sickened and 64 died from injections of fungus-tainted methylprednisolone acetate. Sixteen patients treated in Tennessee died in the outbreak, while 153 were sickened.

In addition to setting a tentative trial date, the motion sets “an efficient, streamlined schedule for conducting additional fact investigation and resolving important legal questions,” said Mark Chalos, a Nashville attorney who represents several Tennessee victims.

Chalos said Saint Thomas cases were proposed to go first because the of the large number of local victims. Only Michigan has reported more cases, with 264 victims and 19 deaths.

Victims from across the country have filed hundreds of claims in the bankruptcy case of the New England Compounding Center, which state and federal officials say was the source of the fungus-tainted steroid.

Not all of those filing claims actually got fungal meningitis.

Benny Sells of Livingston, Tenn., said he filed a claim “to protect my interests” in the event he gets sick later and because he had to undergo testing after being notified he might be infected. Like other claimants, he said he was not hopeful that he will ever get anything from the bankruptcy.

Oma Jackson of Linden, Tenn., said she filed a claim because she has experienced a series of illnesses including pneumonia after getting three injections at the Saint Thomas clinic.

“It’s been continual,” she said.

Court records show that many of the claims missed a Jan. 15 filing deadline.